Regarding the path to scan, why not have it as an configuration file in .home ?

We don’t like configure options. We like “it just works without the user having to configure anything”. If we need to get better at that, that’s what we need to do. Delegating this to the user by the way of configure options that the user needs to mess around with is not the way to go, imho. On the Mac, things “just work”. That’s what we strive for.

Royi:

It seems AppImage is lacking the right User Experience for average users in Linux, really.

Maybe we are not “there” yet, but I don’t think there is the right (one) user experience. It always depends on the background of the user. Someone who is coming from Windows will have different expectations from someone coming from the Mac, or a longtime Linux user. For example, to my knowledge you are the first person ever that asked for a system tray icon. But we want to listen closely to new users like you, because it’s users like you we are developing this for.

Regarding the path to scan, why not have it as an configuration file in .home ?

We don’t like configure options. We like “it just works without the user having to configure anything”. If we need to get better at that, that’s what we need to do. Delegating this to the user by the way of configure options that the user needs to mess around with is not the way to go, imho. On the Mac, things “just work”. That’s what we strive for.

I’m coming from macOS and Windows.
The app in make have system wide integration (Like having AppData locations for integration with TeXLive).
If you want to imitate that, go a head, you probably need to build a lot of services and become something like, well, FlatPak / Snap.
That fight is over.
The forces behind FlatPak / Snap are too strong.
Hence you see VS Code in FlatPak / Snap package but not in AppImage because for that simple use case, they make much more sense.

AppImage needs use case it has advantage in.
This could and should be, in my opinion, the Portable system.
Namely I have all my applications in one place (Be it a different partition, HD / USB Key, etc…) and on any system (If switch distributions, switch computers, working on someone’s else computer, etc…) I will have my applications with me with the same configuration, etc…

You’re almost there.
You built all needed features needed for that.
Only thing needed is to make aapimaged easier to work with.

Let's consider to unify 4 tools into one
https://github.com/AppImage/appimaged
https://github.com/azubieta/appimage-desktop-integration
https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher
https://github.com/CalebQ42/LinuxPA
In times in which people complain about fragmentation of the already small Desktop Linux...

probono:

Royi:

It seems AppImage is lacking the right User Experience for average users in Linux, really.

Maybe we are not “there” yet, but I don’t think there is the right (one) user experience. It always depends on the background of the user. Someone who is coming from Windows will have different expectations from someone coming from the Mac, or a longtime Linux user. For example, to my knowledge you are the first person ever that asked for a system tray icon. But we want to listen closely to new users like you, because it’s users like you we are developing this for.

“It just works” is what we aim for. And no, we are not “there” yet…

The all purpose of me writing here is to help, to my best understanding, what should be improved.
Thank you for being open minded and having great discussion on it.